The PlainCities data editor
Pages on PlainCities are signed "PlainCities". Behind the byline is one role, the data editor, carried out with AI agents and scripts by the studio that publishes the site. There is no named person behind it, and no page says otherwise.
Published
What the data editor does
It loads the Census Bureau's files into one database: the 2020-2024 American Community Survey with every margin of error, the 2015-2019 survey for change, the 2020 Census counts, the Vintage 2025 population estimates and the building permits, for every place, town and township, county and census tract the Bureau publishes them for. It decides which figures each page type shows, writes the rules that turn figures into sentences, and decides which rows get a page of their own (the rule).
What it checks, and when
Before every release of the database it runs the release checks: that every place, county and tract the Census Bureau publishes is loaded, that a sample of figures matches the Census Bureau's API to the digit, that each state's population equals the sum of its counties, that the inflation factor matches the Bureau of Labor Statistics index and that every row is either a page or a section of one. The release stops if any check fails. The date and result of the last run, check by check, are on the methodology page.
For the October 2026 release it also re-read figures from the rendered pages of every page type against the Census Bureau's API (39 figures on 13 page types, none differed) and opened each page type in a browser at five widths in both themes. Before that release, separate AI reviewer agents, not the ones that built the pages, reviewed the site in six roles (a quality rater, a spam analyst, a competing publisher, an answer engine, a claims and legal reader and a designer); each finding was fixed or answered in writing before release (the release record lists which).
What it does not do
It does not change a figure, round one into a different claim or rank an estimate the survey cannot support. It does not call a place good or bad, or recommend where to live (editorial policy). AI writes the code and the sentence templates; every number in a sentence comes from a database query.
How to reach it
Report an error or ask about a figure at hello@plaincities.com. Corrections are made at the source and listed with their date on the corrections page. Who publishes PlainCities is on the about page.